I asked OpenAI's research leaders if AI will take their jobs
GPT-5.5 is here, and I asked the people who built it what comes next for them. Also: Notes on the model release and what it signals, Big Tech's big cuts, Tesla's mysterious robotics deal, and more
I’m en route back to the West Coast after a couple of days of meetings with some of the Alltogether crew in Washington D.C., where the administration’s embrace of this weekend’s White House Correspondents’ dinner has apparently caused a flurry of tech executives asking their local teams and lobbyists to get them into all the best parties. I’ll have a rare Friday issue for you tomorrow.
Amid all the fear about how AI will replace jobs, at the end of today’s press call with OpenAI executives about their new model, GPT-5.5 (aka Spud), I wanted to know how the company’s researchers feel about their own job security.
One of OpenAI’s top goals is to build a non-human AI researcher. Sam Altman has said the company is targeting an “automated AI research intern” by September and a fully autonomous researcher by early 2028. GPT-5.5 is, as co-founder Greg Brockman put it on today's call, “a big step towards more agentic and intuitive computing.” I asked a question: What will OpenAI’s human researchers do when they’ve finally built an AI version of themselves?
